South Region saw one of the biggest outbreaks of mumps in 2014

This region saw one of the biggest outbreak of mumps in the last year.

Its emerged that nearly 2 thousand cases of the highly infectious disease were notified to the health authorities over the past 12 months.

A significant number of them – nearly 30percent of the overall total – were in the HSE South region which includes Carlow, Kilkenny, South Tipperary, Waterford, Cork and Kerry.

The scale of the outbreak, since July 2014, has led the Health Protection Surveillance Centre to recommend an increase in the overall coverage of the MMR vaccine among teenagers and young adults to prevent similar large outbreaks in future.